Suicide Bombing in Pakistan

The Danish Embassy was attacked yesterday by a suicide bomber, killing eight and wounding twenty-four according to initial reports. There has not been a statement of responsiblity yet, but it is a relatively safe bet that the Embassy was targeted due to the decision by Danish newspapers to reprint offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).

The sad thing, beyond the loss of life, is the logic that has led some people to perpetrate acts like this: "Some Westerners say that Islam is a backward and violent religion and have assaulted the character of our Prophet. In retaliation for this vile behavior of saying that we have a violent religion, I will blow up the Danish Embassy, myself, and a host of innocent bystanders, many of whom may be Muslim." Of course, this is a sick and twisted minority that in no way represents the vast community of Muslims and their interpretation of Islam. Yet, when such things happen, i.e. these senseless acts of violence, people do not pour into the streets in condemnation in the way that they condemned the original cartoons, or the movie "Fitna," or the teacher in Sudan who named a teddy bear "Mohammed." The Muslim community (the Ummah) must realize that the people who are doing the most damage to their religion are not the crack-pot Westerners like Geert Wilders, but the extremist Muslims who provide these critics with so much fuel. If there were no suicide bombers like the one in Pakistan, there would be much less criticism of Islam in the West. I know that the religion and how people choose to interpret it and use it politically are two very different things, but Muslims must rise up to defend their religion against the people within their community who corrupt it and tarnish its image as vocally, if not more vocally than they defend the religion against outside critics.

In my travels, I have talked to a large number of people from a variety of countries and backgrounds. Most have been kind and helpful. Many have engaged me in conversation about their religion, regional politics, and my country's foreign policy. All too often, when I have attempted to face this criticism by finding a middle ground where we can admit that both sides have faults and can do much, much more to improve relations, this middle ground is refused. One of my Arab Muslim friends told me that, even from within the community, when he advocates coming to this middle ground and condemning evils in the the Arab and Islamic world as vocally as the evils found in the West, he has often been shouted down and labeled as a traitor.

The rhetorical extremes taken by clerics and editorial commentators, the hate-filled and scholarship-light books and articles available, the spitting-angry demonstrations, and the violence that a minority perpetrate in the name of Islam are all far more damaging to the Ummah than any Western cartoon, or movie, or book could ever be. Why doesn't the Ummah condemn these things inside their community as loudly they do the silly outside influences that really do them no harm? Why do people play into the hands of critics by providing them with more hatred, vitriol, and violence?

Rachel Ray, Terrorist Sympathizer

In a piece of completely asinine news from the U.S., Rachel Ray has been accused of sympathizing with terrorists because she wore a black-and-white kaffiyeh as a scarf for a photo in a Dunkin Donuts ad. (The conservative whackos who got up in arms about that would really be up in arms to know that DD is coming to a crazy Arab country like Oman).

I'll refrain from naming the conservative ass who "broke" the story in a blog just because I do not want to help with her personal publicity, but she says that the traditional Palestinian kaffiyeh has come to symbolize Muslim extremism and terrorism. Now, I have absolutely no tolerance for the sick and twisted brands of extremism that come out of the Middle East, but in my opinion, all of these people are cut of the same cloth. Their ideologies, self-righteousness, polemics, paranoid conspiracy theories, etc. are all very similar, but they just serve different selfish goals. Of course, the "Islamic" terrorists use violence, but I really think that the difference is not the ideology, but the situation. If these American whackos had grown up in Palestine, they'd be sicko terrorists too.

So, what needs to happen, is someone needs to invent a biometric whacko scanner. We scan everyone and send all the people who scan positive as whackos from all over the world to a fenced off area in the desert somewhere about the size of Gaza and let them work their ideological differences out. It wouldn't create world peace, but it definitely would rid us of the more ridiculous rhetoric out there. (By the way, the use of the phrase "sons of pigs and monkeys" when referring to a whole category of people qualifies you for the trip.)

As for Americans, they need to wake up and condemn the stupidity of commentators like this. It is this sort of extremism that plays right into the hands of the enemy (by enemy, I mean the enemy who kills innocent people, who bullies his own, and who uses the flag of righteousness to cover up his own greed and power-lust, not everyone the enemy looks like). As for the rest of the world, they need to do the same. Clean up your own playpen and stop blaming other people for your own faults, then maybe everyone can work together to find amenable solutions for major problems. Its impossible to work issues out when whole groups of people refuse to condemn idiotic, polemical rhetoric that sounds like the logic of an elementary school bully who can't read.